New MX-5 Owners Club member system and forum to launch Feb 3rd

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New MX-5 Owners Club member system and forum to launch Feb 3rd
 
As we announced in December's issue of Soft Top Hardtop, the MX-5 Owners Club have been developing a new online membership management system to link our website, forum, accounting, record keeping, and communication channels in one place to streamline the administration of the club, reduce the workload on our volunteers and improve the member experience.

This work is now almost complete and will be launched on Monday February 3rd. All possible efforts have been taken to keep the interruption to members at a bare minimum, but there will be some downtime as we migrate our data to the new system.

Please be aware of the following:
  • The facility to join the club or renew your membership online will be temporarily unavailable from January 31st until February 3rd.
     
  • The Club's forum will be closed to new registrations and new posts from January 31st until the new forum goes live on February 3rd.
     
  • Existing users will be required to create a new password when logging in for the first time after February 3rd. Your MX-5 OC online account will work as a single sign-on across the entire MX-5 OC website for all functions, for example, for paid-up members to access members-only content like back issues of Soft Top Hardtop.

    Don't worry, existing forum usernames will be carried across, and you will receive another email when the new system goes live guiding you through how to log on. The only data that we will not be bringing across are car details, demographics and interests because a large proportion of the information currently held is either incomplete or out of date.  The email guide will show you how to bring it all up-to-date.
     
  • There will soon be FAQ and support pages on the website detailing the changeover, and you will have access to a dedicated support helpdesk to assist with any aspect of using the new member dashboard or forum. 


Why do we need a new forum?

We are moving the forum to a more modern platform called Discourse. The primary advantage of this software is that it is designed to be fast and accessible on smartphones and tablets. More than half of our forum traffic now comes from mobile devices and this is a trend that will only increase, so upgrading to Discourse moves the MX-5 OC forum firmly into the future.

Traditional desktop users will enjoy a cleaner and simplified design, and Discourse supports single sign-on integration with other functions of the Club's website. This means that you will be able to seamlessly link from the forum to read a Soft Top Hardtop back issue without being required to enter a second password, or you can renew your membership without having to enter your personal information each time.

For those who can't wait, visit the Discourse website by clicking here to get a preview of what you'll be able to do. 


What will the new system offer me?

Other than a simplified forum and website experience, you likely won't notice much of a change, initially. But as the largest MX-5 club in the world with over 7,500 members and events attracting over 2,500 cars, administration of the club is an enormous task and this new system will save paid staff's time and relieve the burden on volunteers, saving on operating costs and allowing them more time to enjoy their MX-5s.   

Rather than having many separate and unconnected systems for things like member records, event registrations, shop sales, and mass email, the new system will enable us to integrate all these functions and thus serve members better. Everything will be hosted online, and the club's website will act as the visible front end of this new system. For example, it means that at the click of a button the club office can produce the financial reports required for its accounting and compliance obligations. 

The building of this rich dataset will allow the club to gradually improve the member experience, and this is what you'll notice in the coming years. In a matter of seconds, the office will be able to see what the spread of membership is throughout the country, enabling better and more convenient events to be planned.

Or it could find out how many 10th Anniversary Edition Mk2s are in the club, making the organisation of a dedicated 10th Anniversary Run a simple task. You'll also begin to receive better digital communication from the Club and regions because doing this will be a far simpler and less time-consuming task for the office and volunteers alike.
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Good luck with the conversion to the new software guys, know from experience what hella lot of work it is along with the stress of worrying about losing the database…one word…Back up (ok so that’s actually two words!).

 

Not sure om the new platform, have looked at it before but seems to be too paired back for me but anything that consolodates the website and forum and makes it easier to run and manage everything then it has to be a good thing.

 

Dave

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The Discourse demo forum looks very amateurish. Hope that’s a bare bones system that can be tailored to look a bit more professional for the club forum.

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It does take a little bit of getting used to, it is quite pared back compared to older style forums, it does work really well over all device access models, computer/tablet/mobile phone.

I am a member of another active community using discourse (BrewDog EFP forum) with a large number of active users and would rate it highly, easier to use than this where I often have to jump on to the computer to achieve something I could do using my phone for discourse.

 

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Ian

Can you put up a link to this established discourse forum or another similar accessible forum, so we can have an idea of what we are getting.

Thanks

Rob

 

 

 

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Rob,

The one I mentioned is shareholder access only, a quick look at some other discourse examples suggests the one linked below is not dissimilar to how this one will be:

https://community.infiniteflight.com/ 

Worth trying it out on a number of different devices, PC/Mac based access is in the minority here now and the current software doesn’t do mobile well.

Ian

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Fair points. I’m one of the many dinosaurs who uses my phone only when I have to and my laptop most of the time. I’m aware that it’s been said that the majority of traffic is now from mobile devices so it makes sense to move to something that caters to the majority.

I’ll try to curb my inner Victor Meldrew from now on. The older I get the more the grumpy sod comes out.

Tongue in cheek rhetorical part of post follows.

Can we have a dedicated dinosaur area where us old gits can grumble about the new forum for a while until we get used to it without annoying everybody else? Ideally it should have an automated ‘Sorry for any inconvenience’ post every hour or so and the occasional ‘**** off’ thrown in for good measure. That way those of you doing all the hard work to get everything up and running can just get on with it without having to placate us.

 

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We might manage to squeeze a COG area in somewhere for people to opine on subjects various with access restricted to those who can provide either a certificate in cantankerousness or a vocational qualification in curmudgeounary… 

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Thanks for that Ian.

I found the brewdog website and dropped in on a couple of posts with a search but nice to have one to access properly.

Got to say that I am surprised that the majority access the forum in methods other than desktop/laptop.

I’m an ex IT man but only use a phone/tablet for internet use as a last resort.

Hoping that the new forum will be as useable/functional for old gits on laptops as this one.      

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I also spent many years building (including designing and printing circuit boards, chips and O/Ss) and using computers of many kinds, including more recently tablets and phones. 

Guess what this dinosaur hates using?  Those crippled tiny tablets and phones trying to squeeze a gallon of functionality into an egg-cup. 

And webspeak is almost as bad.

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‘Fellow of the Institute of Truculence’ get me in OK? I tend not to use the qualification on letterheads as adding ‘FIT’ after my name provokes derision.

Edit -

OK fellow dinosaurs, where shall we go from here? Fax, Telex, paper and pencil or pigeon?

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I’m another ex-IT man who hates using mobiles for anything other than making phone calls (for which my Nokia 3210 is more than adequate).  Give me a proper PC any day.

 

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haha. Work and have worked in IT for 25 years. Used to have linux servers all over the place at home, now i do but all tucked away neatly along with a large QNAP. When I get home in the evening i’ve now had enough of desktops, so find an iPad Pro is heaven, just to lazy to move from the sofa works great for modern sites :slight_smile: